Day 7 Tuesday 16th June The sun beating down on the tent meant an early start to the morning, and so after the boys had a quick dip in the stream, we were on the road again. Our first stop was the township of Betws-y-Coed, a cute little village that was quite sweet. We all had a walk around, buying a few souvenirs and having a drink, before once again hitting the road. From Betws-y-Coed, we said goodbye to Wales as we headed back into England and on to the Lakes District. We made really great time, arriving in Windermere [View Full Entry]

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Day 3 Friday 12th June After packing up camp, it was a couple of hours drive before we crossed over into Wales, our sixth country! Our destination for the night was a town called Barry on the south coast, where we were staying with Lynne, a lady Dav and I met in Ireland. We were a little early to go there, but a little late to head into Cardiff, so we stopped just outside of Barry at Cosmeston Lake. There we had some lunch and plotted out our itinerary for the rest of the UK trip, while being surrounded by [View Full Entry]

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The preparation, the packing... Back in England, we were spoilt rotten with Carolyn, Lucretia and Craig’s landlady, cooking up massive feasts at each meal for the five days we were there, getting ourselves organised. Needless to say, it was hard to leave, although she did bake up a heap of muffins and flapjacks (kinda like Anzac biscuits) for us to take-away! Lovely! Day 1 Wednesday 10th June First day in the next chapter of our travels! Our plans for an early get away were not as successful as we had planned, with us not getti [View Full Entry]

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Madrid The flight to Madrid was fine, although our welcome to the city was not ideal... Taking the metro in from the airport into the city, Dav and I were travelling up an escalator between platforms, when Dav felt a slight tug on his shorts. Looking down, he saw a little hand, belonging to the young girl behind him on the escalator, deep in his pocket, fingers around his wallet and trying to pull it out. Luckily the pocket had Velcro on both sides and so she was having no luck at all in removing the wallet. Dav went crazy [View Full Entry]

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Ben and Lauren’s handcuffing ceremony! Being back in Santiago after our week and a half stint in Portugal was fantastic - almost like we had come home! Ben and Lauren had even booked the same unit for everyone to stay in so we even had our old room again! For dinner we caught up with everyone who was already in Santiago for the wedding, being Ben’s folks Ross and Caroline, Lauren’s parents Kevin and Sue, Lauren’s best friend (and twin*) Penny and her partner Corey. The rest of the wedding guests, Ben’s friend’s Stu and Happy, a [View Full Entry]

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Day 41 Friday 8th May Up nice and early as we had the extra ground to make up. Retracing our steps we found the ‘arrow’ we had missed... I think the fairy with the yellow spray paint needs to touch that one up! The rest of the day was long and shitty, 26km all on roads through boring scenery. So by the time we finally made it into Friol just before 2pm, my bottom lip was hanging rather low. We booked into the nearest pension we could find as there were no albergues in town. Not the nicest of accommodations [View Full Entry]

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Day 40 Thursday 7th May The lights came on automatically just before 7am so no chance of a sleep-in... Luckily we were able to leave our bags at the albergue so after packing up, we set off to have some breakfast and explore Lugo, making a few special purchases... We have a few options with the next section of walking. We can cut down to the Camino Frances, or we can walk along a less-used path to join up with the Camino Coastal, which then joins up with the Camino Frances but not for a day or two longer. Given [View Full Entry]

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Day 42 Saturday 9th May We set off quite early just to get the day over really. I was not looking forward to walking at all and had a bus coming along I would have been very tempted to jump on board... My bad attitude actually helped though as the day couldn’t have been any worse than I imagined. It started out great as only 3km into the day we hit a crossroad and we decided to follow the road, which immediately cut out 5km! Talk about an instant mood improvement! The rest of the walk was a lot more [View Full Entry]

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Day 43 Sunday 10th May The day that greeted us was once again beautiful with blue skies but not too hot. The path today was the best in quite a few days as now that we have joined up with the Coastal Camino we are on a more travelled route, complete with lovely gravel paths following the road (so much nicer on the feet than bitumen). We made really good time, reaching Arzua just after 1pm. We were passed by a procession of motorcyclists on the way into town and it turned out that there was a festival that day [View Full Entry]

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Day 44 Monday 11th May I woke a few times to a silent room which was just lovely... but then someone obviously rolled on their backs and the snoring started... So since we were all awake, we got up at 6.30pm and started the day. It was very obvious that we were now on the Frances route, with constant clear arrows... although Dav and I somehow still managed to get distracted and lost, taking a slight detour before joining back up with the path. Ben and Lauren caught up with us and we all stopped at a bar and had [View Full Entry]

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